Clary Is Your Sister', Ch 22-23 from City of Bones in Jace's POV
by DominiqueMorgenstern
Summary: From City of Bones, this is the sequence where Clary and Jace are told, from Valentine, that they are brother and sister.
1. Chapter 1

**This is the first part of the whole fic; it ends where Ch. 22 of City of Bones does. Hope you like it! **

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Jace was thinking: _everything was a lie._

_I..._

_Was a lie._

A feminine voice punctured the cool silence. "Jace!" His name was uttered in a low, distraught bow, infused with relief; a longing, soaring call that immediately struck him with a freezing jolt of shock.

For a moment, he allowed himself to languish in the denial: that he did not recognise that voice. That that voice, since he had first heard it, had not enthralled his mind, that it did not smear itself over his thoughts, that it did not taunt and tempt him in his dreams. That he did not so hatefully adore its accent, its laugh, its cadence. That he was familiar and intimate with it on terms that he had never meant, or thought he ever would have been.

He closed his eyes.

He was nearly flung against the glass windows, as she wrapped her arms around him. It was a hard embrace, he thought, carelessly affectionate. He turned around, about to push her away, but he could not do it. How could he ever?

An unexpected, skittish thrill went through him, then, turning to see her bright red head of hair – copper streaks shining floridly in the candlelight – nestled confidingly into his stomach; the pressure telling him of her worry, her relief, that she sought protection and comfort, and _from him. _She wanted him to put his arms around her. _She wanted him. _He felt weak with a kind of sensuous joy.

It wrangled afflictively with another sensation: of lingering trauma, realised in _Valentine—_Valentine_, is my father. It was him all along. _After that had violently collided into everything he once thought he was, he had been trying to rearrange the shattered bits and pieces of him around this enormous, gaping truth. But he felt as helpless as a small child. Inside his voice, a voice said to darkly to him, _and so you are the son of a murderer. Of everything you are fighting against._

And then another replied, _but my father is alive. He is real again. He has returned. I can belong again._

"Clary," he heard himself say. He sounded unreal, like a dream. "What are you doing here?"

She said, her voice muffled, "I came for you."

He thinks about how this is possible; how she knew he was here, how she must have got past all the Forsaken Valentine had guarding Renwick's – and survived? With barely a scratch, it looked like. He was at once horrified and hugely impressed. _She'd done this alone? By the angel, she could have died. She could have died a horrific death. Just for me? Why is she always so thoughtless?_ The next words that came from him sounded grindingly angry. "You shouldn't have." He let her go—_he'd been holding her?_—and stepped away. Then, his voice was gentle as a whisper. "You idiot, what a thing to do."

His fingers were reaching out again anyway, craving to touch her, the backs of them softly caressing the bridge of her nose, the freckles over her cheekbones – and he marvelled, _so this is what her skin feels like. _And a mad part of him wanted to grin, or laugh aloud. His hands were cradling the back of her head, stroking her hair and thinking with amazement that, right now, he was _finally doing it _– enacting all those little fantasises he didn't even know he'd been jealously creating and hoarding in the back of his mind.

He did not mean to, though he heard himself say aloud, "Why don't you ever _think_?"

Neither of them acknowledged the fact that, only days previously, they would have laughed to be so shamelessly vulnerable with each other. Like this: arms wrapped around each other, murmuring things like no one else in the world could see, or hear. No Izzy, or Alec, or the mundane—Simon. Just them.

There was no going back now.

She pulled away, and tilted her head back to meet his gaze. Her tone was perplexed, and hurt. "I _was _thinking. I was thinking about you."

_Clary, don't say that. To think I could have been the reason for your death..._He closed his eyes, suddenly anguished and disgusted at that thought. "If anything had happened to you," he felt her arms in his hands again, obsessively tracing the shape of them over and over and committing it to memory. _This, right now, is what I want to remember. _"How did you find me?"

"Luke," she said. "I came with Luke, to rescue you."

This soothed Jace somewhat, but only slightly. He did not trust Luke. Although he knew this man had been like a father to Clary, he disapproved of her eagerness to trust him after he so horribly betrayed her. Had they not both _witnessed _him renounce Jocelyn and she whilst being interrogated by Pangborn and Blackwell? Suddenly, he recalled the manacles that he'd found in Luke's house—the dried blood, how the nails were loose in the wall from being yanked—_by the angel, _he was a werewolf,Jace realised. _Luke is a werewolf. It's obvious. Chaining themselves up during the Turn – historically, it's virtually common practice. Of course. _Jace felt burningly ashamed that he had not realised it before. _Perhaps, _said a voice inside his head, _you were too focused on impressing Clary. _He glanced down at the window, though he could see no sign of the werewolves. "So those are—you came with the wolf clan?" he asked.

"Luke's," she said. "He's a werewolf, and—"

"I know," Jace interrupted. "I should have guessed—the manacles." He scanned the room. "Where is he?"

She seemed to hesitate. "Downstairs. He killed Blackwell. I came up to look for you—"

_What?! _Jace realised that the werewolves were probably here with the intention of killing said, with as much composure as he could muster, "He's going to have to call them off."

Clary's expression was baffled. "What?"

"Luke," Jace repeated emphatically, "He's going to have to call off his pack. There's been a misunderstanding."

Clary sounded distraught. "What, you—kidnapped yourself?"

Jace did not know what to say to this.

"Come _on, _Jace," Clary grabbed his wrist, and pulled hard, but he resisted.

His gaze snagged on her shirt and jeans, which were dirty and bloody. In turn, he saw her step back and examine him very slowly and closely: his clean, white shirt and neat blank pants and recently washed hair. She had never seen him like this before, he thought. Anticipating her reaction, he swept aside some stray strands of hair nervously.

"Are those your clothes?...And you're all bandaged up..." Her voice faded out. She sounded distinctly unnerved when she commented wryly, "Valentine seems to be taking awfully good care of you."

He did not know how to tell her. He felt exhausted from everything that happened to him in the last few hours, and his simultaneous joy and concern robbed him of words. What would she think? What would she say? Would she understand? Would she run away? Would she tell him he was crazy? He smiled sadly at her, saying, "If I told you the truth, you'd say I was crazy."

Emotions flitted rapidly across her face as her eyes widened. She shook her head a little. "No, I wouldn't."

He was going to have to say it. _Just say it. _"My father," even the words felt _wrong _somehow, incongruous and misshapen things in his mouth, "gave me these clothes."

Her head shook harder in refusal to accept this. "Jace." She said, looking at him intently, her voice slipped into an ominous, authoritative tone, "your father is dead."

"No. I thought he was, but he isn't. It's all been a mistake," he felt weightless, curiously euphoric, at this declaration. It freed him. _It'll all be alright now. I grieved my father for so long, but now he's back._

Still, she shook her dead determinedly at him. "Is this something Valentine told you? Because he's a liar, Jace. Remember what Hodge said. If he's telling you your father is alive, it's a lie to get you to do what he wants."

"I've seen my father," Jace replied. "I've talked to him. He gave me this," with his forefinger and thumb, he plucked his shirt away from his chest. "My father isn't dead. Valentine didn't kill him. Hodge lied to me. All these years I thought he was dead...but he wasn't."

Still, it nagged at him: _yes Hodge might have lied...but so did your father._

Clary looked frantically around the room. He watched her eyes dart to the magnificent emptiness of the long mirrors that glaringly reflected her horror. To the glassware that glistened on the laid table. To the sickly candlelight that flung wide, burnished shadows over the cavernous corners of the room. The aromatic burning of candle and wick, folding over against the stone walls. She said, with a heavy dash of sarcasm, "Well, if your father's really in this place, then where is he? Did Valentine kidnap him, too?"

_She really is stubborn, isn't she? _"My father—"

Stepped into the room, just then, closing the door behind him. As always, Jace's father was dressed regimentally, impeccably. He looked the same as when he last saw him, but seeing his face again was still stunned Jace into silence. Valentine—_his father, _he reminded himself—did not look very different, Jace thought, as to when he was younger. Perhaps there were a few more lines; his muscular frame had gathered extra bulk; his white-blond hair had drained away to a white-steel colour, closely cropped, as always. But all the planes of his face were essentially the same: angular, flinty, armoured, impervious. And yet, somehow, there was no hint of brutality; in fact, there was a kind of clever elegance to it – reflected in the precise flares of his freshly runed neck and arms. _A true Shadowhunter's face, _Jace had always thought. A huge broadsword was strapped to his back from a waist sheath. He rested his hand atop the hilt calmly as his undeniable voice projected across the room, "So, have you gathered your things? Our Forsaken can hold off the wolf-men for only so—"

Clary had been standing in the shadow, but, after he'd begun, Valentine's eyes had pricked—and found her. Then, his father's expression transformed into something Jace had never seen before: shock. Pure, unadulterated shock. It was transient, but enough to unsettle Jace – the widening of Valentine's eyes, the frown, the slackening of his jaw, his panic even bleeding into his stance as his hand fell from his sword, to his side. Bewildered, Jace glanced at Clary, but he could not see what caused his father's reaction. "What is this?" Valentine demanded shortly. He was still glowering at Clary, though Jace knew this was directed at him.

Before he could answer, he glimpsed Clary dig around in her waist for something—and produce a glinting dagger. She drew her hand back—_NO—_

Jace dove forward, wrenching her wrist back. "_No," _he told her emphatically.

She looked insulted and incredulous as she glared up at him. "But, Jace—"

"Clary," he said sternly. "This man is _my father._"


	2. Chapter 2

Valentine's voice was coolly disinterested as he emerged from the darkness, "I see I've interrupted something. Son, would you care to tell me who this is? One of the Lightwood children, perhaps?"

Jace twisted his head at him quizzically, puzzled by this sudden shift of emotion. "No," Jace replied. He glanced down at Clary, who was glowering at where his wrist gripped her's. "This is Clary. Clarissa Fray. She's a friend of mine. She—"

Valentine cut him off. "Where did you come by that blade, young lady?" Jace watched his eyes scour her with a virulence that surprised Jace; his gaze latching onto the knife Clary held defiantly.

She answered indignantly, "Jace gave it to me."

"Of course he did," Valentine said smoothly. He put out a hand. "May I see it?"

"No!" Clary stepped backwards, pulling the blade towards her. Jace couldn't just stand by—he plucked the knife easily out of her hand, about to give it to his father when Clary snarled, "_Jace_," with such a look of utter betrayal that it stopped Jace in his tracks.

He said, "You still don't understand, Clary." He wanted to say, _you—we—both had Valentine all wrong. He's not evil. He's my father. _Jace turned, giving the blade to Valentine. "Here you go, father,"

Valentine took the blade and examined it, expressionless. "This is a kindjal, a Circassian dagger. This particular one used to be of a matched pair. Here, we see the star of the Morgensterns, carved into the blade." He turned it over, angling it so Jace could see. "I'm surprised the Lightwoods never noticed it." A distinctly suspicious tone crept into his voice at the end.

Jace looked at him, unsure of how to answer. "I never showed it to them. They let me have my own private things. They didn't pry."

"Of course they didn't." He handed the kindjal back to Jace. "They thought you were Michael Wayland's son."

Jace slid the dagger into his weapons belt, and, though he didn't intend to, murmured softly, "So did I._"_ _I thought _you _were Michael Wayland._

_Why did you lie, father? What reason would you have to lie about who you were? To a child. Why?_

Valentine suggested, "Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to sit down now, Clary?"

Jace felt his forehead furrow, puzzled by this request.

Clary folded her arms over her chest, her expression flat, but beneath it, seething. "No."

"As you like," Valentine replied neutrally. He moved away from Jace, drew out a chair and seated himself at the head of the table. Jace did not what to do. Was he supposed to sit beside him? Jace remembered the way it had been when he was a child: his father would walk away; he would follow. It was something so ingrained into him that it felt unnatural _not _to. But was it the same, now? Now that Jace was seven years older? What did he expect of him? Valentine always used to incline his head towards him, and always, Jace would imagine his voice, resounding in his head. _Aren't you coming? _Torn by indecision, Jace followed anyway, and sat, near a bottle of wine.

Valentine looked totally relaxed and yet totally in control. It was a sophisticated, carefully wrought pose Jace had always subconsciously tried to imitate, and felt he was never much good at. He said to Clary, "But you are going to be hearing some things that might make you wish you had taken a chair." _What did _that _mean? _His father leaned, pressing himself against the tall, sturdy back of the chair, and lifted his head to further peruse the figure of Clary, who was glaring at him. Valentine appeared almost rapt. Almost...entertained? As if something was half-delighting, half-frustrating him. It was bizarre. He could not remember his father ever being so unduly engrossed in anyone else his own age; why was he paying so much attention to Clary?

It occurred to Jace that, perhaps...he'd _seen _them?...Embracing? Before he came into the room—perhaps he'd been _watching _them?

Jace did not know why, but he felt his blood run, fiery hot, to surface of his skin. Nausea dug down deep in his stomach.

"I'll let you know," Clary replied, barely suppressing the disdain in her voice. "If that happens."

"Very well." Valentine put his hands behind his head, his shirt constricting against the solid muscle that wrapped his torso. That, too, Jace thought, was an odd gesture...Jace could not remember his father ever doing that before. His shirt gaped open, bearing some of the runes enveloping his neck, and layers of criss-crossed, interweaving white scars. Much more than there used to be, Jace noticed worriedly. _What did you expect? _Jace thought. _He's a Shadowhunter_. But Jace felt distinctly uneasy. What had he been doing, exactly, these seven years? Creating Forsaken? Killing demons? He was doing it alone, then. Injuring himself, healing, and injuring himself again, all alone.

"Clary," Valentine articulated her name, very slowly, with relish, letting the syllables roll over his mouth thoughtfully, as if calling her attention back to him – though it had was never diverted. "Short...for Clarissa?" He guessed frowningly, and glanced around the room. A muscle in his jaw pricked and his mouth turned down slightly. "Not a name _I _would have chosen,"

Jace was thoroughly bewildered. He wanted to demand, but couldn't, _what-by the angel, father, what are you talking about? You don't know Clary. What are you _saying?! Jace focused intently on the wine glass in his left hand, and stared at the dark liquid-cherry red in this light, puce red in that—imagining it as his own washing blood, sluicing in and out of his banging heart, thundering away with his breath.

"I don't really care what you would have chosen," Clary threw back.

"I am sure," Valentine leaned forward now, readying himself. _For what? _"That you don't."

Clary declared, recalcitrant, "You're _not _Jace's father. You're trying to trick us. Jace's father was Michael Wayland. The Lightwoods know it. Everyone knows it."

His father replied calmly, "The Lightwoods were misinformed. They truly believed—believe that Jace is the son of their friend Michael. As does the Clave. Even the Silent Brothers do not know who he really is. Although soon enough, they will."

"But the Wayland ring—" Clary objected.

"Ah, yes," Valentine glanced at Jace's hand. "The ring. Funny, isn't it, how an M worn upside down resembles a W? Of course, if you'd bothered to think about it, you'd probably have thought it a little strange that the symbol of the Wayland family would be a falling star. But not at all strange that it would be the symbol of the Morgensterns."

Clary looked confused. "I have no idea what you mean."

Valentine muttered disapprovingly, "I forget how regrettably lax mundane education is," He sighed and then said, as if it was a great imposition to have to explain the etymology of the name, "Morgenstern means 'morning star'. As in 'How are thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!"

Clary's eyes widened. "You mean Satan."

"Or any great power lost," Valentine said, "out of a refusal to serve. As mine was. I would not serve a corrupt government, and for that I lost my family, my lands, almost my life—"

"The Uprising was your fault!" Clary bellowed. "People died in it. Shadowhunters like you!"

"Clary," Jace did not know if his voice begged or reprimanded her. "Just listen to him, will you? It's not like you thought." _It's not like any of us thought, _he added internally. _We were all wrong about him. _"Hodge lied to us."

"I know," Clary agreed. "He _betrayed us _to Valentine." She turned her gaze to his father and said firmly, "He was Valentine's pawn."

"No!" Jace said. He felt like standing, going over to her, shaking her by the shoulders. She was so infuriatingly stubborn. But, somehow, he kept his seat. "No, Hodge was the one who wanted the Mortal Cup all along. He was the one who sent the Raveners after your mother. My father—Valentine only found out about it afterward, and came to stop him. He brought your mother here to _heal _her, not to hurt her."

Clary's face twisted. "And you believe that crap?! It isn't true." He noticed that her hands were balled into fists. "Hodge was working for Valentine. They were in it together, getting the Cup. He set us up, it's true, but he was just a tool."

"But," Jace argued,"he was the one who need the Mortal Cup. So he could get the curse off him and flee before my father told the Clave about everything he'd done."

"I know that isn't _true_!" She protested. "I was there!" She turned to Valentine. "I was in the room when you came to get the Cup. You couldn't see me, but I was there. I saw you. You took the Cup and you lifted the curse off Hodge. He couldn't have done it himself. He said so."

Valentine said patiently, without a hint of anger, "I did lift his curse. But I was moved by pity. He seemed so pathetic,"

"You didn't feel pity. You didn't feel anything!"

Before Jace could even think, he was shouting at her. "That's enough, Clary!" He felt hot and sick, and so, so, so sick. "Don't," he said, his voice sounded dangerous to his ears, unrecognisable, "talk to my father like that."

Gritting her teeth, breathing hard, she yelled, "He's _not _your father!"

He couldn't believe she was being like this. He felt betrayed. First Hodge and now _Clary, _too? "Why are you so determined not to believe us?"

A pause slid into the moment then, and Jace felt disorientated, suspended above everything after the silent fall of raised voices. Then, Valentine put in, "Because she loves you."

Jace stared at his father in astonishment. His mouth formed a word, but he did not manage to say it. He tried again. "What?"

_But how could you know...that?_

Valentine was not looking at Jace. Again, his gaze was trained on Clary. There was no longer any concealment there: he looked at her with bare amusement now, his eyes delightedly fastened on her confounded face, taking the way her body had gone completely stock-still. He did not look at Jace as he said, "She fears I am taking advantage of you. It isn't so, of course." Then, his tone changed. "If you looked into your own memories, Clary, you would know it."

Jace did not know what he was doing. Suddenly he was pushing his chair back-standing, and then he was saying Clary's name, and – what did he mean to do?—he was about to say something, but his father said, "Sit down. Let her come to it on her own, Jonathan."

Jace felt something tug horribly inside him at the mention of that name. No one had called him by that for years. At the same time, he thought, _let her come to what? _The ugly suspicion, that Valentine was slyly addressing them both, occurred to him.

Nonetheless, Jace slid back into his seat, staring at the table. Clary said, her voice weak, and hurt, "I thought your name was Jace." He swallowed around a knot in his throat and looked up at her. She raised her eyebrows at him. "Did you lie about that, too?"

"No," he said, softly. "Jace is a nickname."

He could see the muscles standing out in her neck, the way she was almost visibly shaking, the feverishly pink flush in her cheeks. "For—what?" It was almost a whisper.

He frowned, wondering why she was asking about something so trivial _now_. "It's my initials. J.C."

Her mouth fell apart, and the breath gushed out of her, as if experiencing sudden, intense relief, or a horrific realisation. She blinked frantically, looked around the room dreamily and whispered, "Jonathan...Jonathan Christopher."

_How—_"How did you-?"

His question went unfinished; Valentine ducked his head and said to him privately, "Jace, I had thought to spare you. I thought the story of a mother who died would hurt you less than the story of a mother who abandoned you before your first birthday."

Jace felt the ugly nausea begin to sprout and steadily wind its way through him like, wielding his body and claiming it for his own like—anger. He did not realise his left hand had found the wine glass—and now, he grasped it tighter, and thought about how much pressure it would take for it fissure, and splinter, straight through his palm. He spoke, voice flat. Dead. "My mother is alive?"

"She is," Valentine replied. The worst thing he could have said. "Alive, and asleep in one of the downstairs rooms at this very moment."

_He meant that Joc—_

"Yes," Valentine said. "Jocelyn is your mother, Jonathan."

And, by the angel, his father's voice was so sincere, confessional, troubled. Jace could not doubt him.

Valentine continued—_no, don't say-_ "And Clary—"

A blessed pause; a curse—

Jace was already there.

Valentine said it at the same time he realised it.

"And Clary is your sister."


End file.
